Mechanical vibration is a normal part of the environment for most products. Vibration can be a result of the location of a product installation or can occur when a product is being transported. An example of the former is a radio installed in a vehicle. During normal operation of the vehicle the radio will experience vibration due to the motion of the vehicle across uneven roads. An example of the latter is a television. While in normal operation the television may be stationary, it must be transported from the factory to the warehouse, to the store, and finally to the home. During this transportation it will experience vibration due to the motion of the transport vehicle and due to moving the product on an off of the transport vehicle.
Since products will normally encounter vibration, it is necessary to design products such that they will survive any vibration experiences when not operating, and continue operating properly even when experiencing vibration during operation. A standard part of the design process is testing the product under vibration to verify proper operation. While it is possible to test some products directly in their natural environment, in many cases it is preferable to reproduce the vibration environment under controlled circumstances in a test lab.
The type of vibration encountered by a product during its lifetime can vary from a continuous repetitive motion to isolated transients to continuous random motion. An example of repetitive motion is the rotation of a drive shaft in a vehicle. This type of vibration is simulated in the lab using a single frequency sine wave. An example of an isolated transient is a package dropping to the floor after being removed from the transport vehicle. This type of vibration is simulated in the lab using a shock transient waveform reproduction. An example of continuous random motion is the vibration of a vehicle as it is travels down the road. This type of vibration can be simulated in the lab by recording a typical vibration, and then reproducing this waveform in the lab.
However, due to expediency and to legacy, the measured real-world vibration waveform is typically reduced by dividing the waveform into time segments, computing the Power Spectral Density (PSD), also called the frequency spectrum, of each time segment, and combining these spectra to create an overall reference PSD which is representative of the entire data set. This PSD is then traditionally reproduced in the lab using a Gaussian random noise signal with the frequency spectrum of the random noise shaped to match the reference PSD of the measured data. This is done out of expediency because a large data set can be reduced down from a long waveform to a single PSD, typically defined by only 4 to 10 values. This is done due to legacy because, until recently, the vibration controllers available were not capable of reproducing a recorded waveform, but they were capable of producing a random noise with a specific frequency spectrum, so many test specifications were written specifically for the Gaussian random noise with a shaped PSD.
One characteristic of the traditional random vibration control systems, and therefore also of nearly all test specifications for random vibration currently in use, is they assume that the probability distribution of real-world vibration is Gaussian, and therefore attempt to duplicate a Gaussian probability distribution in the lab. While many natural phenomena exhibit random behavior with a Gaussian probability distribution, it is becoming recognized that this is not always a good assumption for vibration. Specifically, the Gaussian probability distribution has a very low probability of ‘outlier’ data, with peak values typically no more than 4 times the RMS level. On the other hand, real-world vibration measurements exhibit considerable ‘outlier’ data with peak values of 8 to 10 times the RMS level being common.
It has been suggested by the prior art that it is important to also consider the kurtosis of the data, and not just the PSD, when analyzing the data. The kurtosis is a statistical measure defined as the ratio of the fourth statistical moment divided by the square of the second statistical moment. Since the fourth statistical moment will weight the outliers heavily, the presence of outliers in the vibration waveform will result in an increased kurtosis value. While data with a Gaussian distribution will by definition always have a kurtosis level equal to 3, real-world data typical exhibits kurtosis values of 5 to 8.
While methods of producing random vibrations with higher kurtosis levels have been proposed in the prior art, those previously proposed methods are not technically feasible for closed loop control. Some of the prior art describes systems based on the systems described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,710,082 which is herein incorporated by reference. This patent describes a control technique which has been superseded by more advanced methods. In addition, the prior art based on U.S. Pat. No. 3,710,082 increases the kurtosis of the signal by introducing non-random phase relationships between frequencies, thereby also reducing the randomness of the signal. A second method proposed in the prior art is more aligned with current random vibration control techniques, but uses a non-linear waveform distortion method to adjust the kurtosis, which will distort the frequency spectrum, making it difficult to control both the kurtosis and the frequency spectrum simultaneously. Introducing a non-linearity results in production of harmonics, which makes non-random amplitude and phase relationships between frequencies, and therefore this method also reduces the randomness of the signal.
Thus, there is a need for a system and method for simultaneously controlling both the frequency spectrum and the kurtosis of a random vibration such that each can be controlled independently of the other, and where the amplitude and phase of the PSD retains the full randomness typical of current Gaussian random vibration control methods.